After a a teen gunman killed 15 people in a school shooting in Winnenden, Germany yesterday a debate about German gun laws has begun. On wednesday morning, 17 year old teenager Tim K. went to his old school, the Albertville secondary school, where he shot nine students and three teacher, most of them females. He then fled, shot one passer-by and two people at a car dealer ship before he apparently shot himself during a shooting with the police.
Tim’s parents seem to be well situated. His father is the executive of a packaging company with over a hundred employees. The Porsche driving father also had a passion for fire arms. He is a member of the local gun club and had 15 guns in a safe and one baretta in his night stand. This is the gun that Tim took to shoot 15 people yesterday.
German gun laws are amongst the strictest in the world considering gun sales and ownership, especially after the laws tightened as a result of the 2002 school shooting in Erfurt. The new laws require legal gun owners, who have to be over 21 and who want to store their fire arms at home, to keep those arms in a safe that has to weigh at least 440 pounds and that has to be mounted into the ground. The thickness of the walls, the type of lock and the temper of steel is also specified. In 2008 a further tightening of the law followed, restricting the inheritance of fire arms and prohibiting carrying dangerous knifes or anything that remotely looks like a firearm.
All these restrictions did not prevent the 17 year old Tim to take the firearm that his father kept unlocked in his night stand. While I appreciate the gun laws in Germany, which are amongst the strictest in the world, I think that the laws that will held Tim’s father responsible are too lax. The school massacres in Erfurt and now in Winnenden also showed that while these laws might prevent the theft of firearms, parents often do not keep their firearms from their children. The son in Erfurt had access to the firearm safe and in Winnenden the father kept the baretta unlocked in his bedroom. Maybe this calls for a a law that allows only policemen, private licensed security personnel, rangers and similar professions to keep firearms in their homes. While a discussion about gun laws is now stared, the conservative party, the police and gun lobbyists strongly oppose a repeated tightening of German gun laws.
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